* * * At another time more plainly still, he says, that it is 'a wicked and adulterous generation' (that) 'seeketh after a sign'; on which occasion, according to Mark, 'he sighed deeply in his spirit'.
How characteristic is that touch of the Apostle, 'The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom!' (where by wisdom he means the elegance and refinement of Grecian literature.) Agreeing, as in the main I do, with the sentiments here expressed by this eloquent writer, I must notice that he has, however, mistaken the sense of the [Greek: saemeion], which the Jews would have tempted our Saviour to shew,--namely, the signal for revolt by openly declaring himself their king, and leading them against the Romans.

The foreknowledge that this superstition would shortly hurry them into utter ruin caused the deep sigh,--as on another occasion, the bitter tears.
Again, by the [Greek: sophia] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek: sophistikae] is meant.

The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: and 'sophistae' may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say, iron-mongers.
Ib.p.

350.
Some probably will say, "What argument can induce us to believe a man in a concern of this nature who gives no visible credentials to his authority ?" * * * But let us ask in return, "Is it worthy of a being wearing the figure of a man to require such proofs as these to determine his judgment ?" * * * "The beasts act from the impulse of their bodily senses, but are utterly incapable of seeing from reason why they should so act: and it might easily be shewn, that while a man thinks and acts under the influence of a miracle, he is as much incapable of perceiving from any rational ground why he should thus think and act, as a beast is." "What!" our opponents will perhaps reply, * * * "Was it not by miracles that the prophets (some of them) testified their authority?
Do you not believe these facts ?" Yes, my friends, I do most entirely believe them, &c.
There is so much of truth in all this reasoning on miracles, that I feel pain in the thought that the result is false,--because it was not the whole truth.

But this is the grounding, and at the same time pervading, error of the Swedenborgians;--that they overlook the distinction between congruity with reason, truth of consistency, or internal possibility of this or that being objectively real, and the objective reality as fact.
Miracles, 'quoad' miracles, can never supply the place of subjective evidence, that is, of insight.